By Tal Matalon | Reuma | Translation: Dimi Reider

As I sit down to write about being a nude model, I think I should start by saying that I draw  nudes. Ever since high school, when I would go on drawing marathons, or during drawing classes later on, I looked at the models I drew with a kind of respect. That they can be like that, naked, in front of so many people. I can’t have people I’m sleeping with see me naked in full light. I mean, three of them did. But, generally, fundamentally, no.

I hate my body. No matter how many people tell me it’s bullshit, I know I’m fat and ugly. I know it for a fact. I don’t think it or feel it, I just know. I can’t look at my naked self in the mirror. I can barely look at myself in the mirror even when I’m dressed, unless it’s for practical purposes, like doing my eyebrows or putting on make-up. When all I’m looking at are small sections of my face, zoomed in, devoid of context. But to sit and look at myself, examine myself, all of myself, I cannot. I don’t look at myself for longer than ten seconds.

I can’t understand people who are attracted to me. I think up excuses for those who sleep with me. That they were drunk, or high, or possibly both, that they haven’t touched a woman in years. I expect them to get up and leave as soon as we are done. I expect them to regret it, even in the middle of it. I except them to hate themselves for getting close to me, for being disgusted by what had happened, to not want to see me ever again.

About six months ago, I decided to try being a model. I thought of it as shock treatment. Because I wanted to be sure I could do it, I didn’t want to start with a place that would pay me. I invited three friends, two men and a woman, over to my place. I put on some music. I smoked a whole lot. And I took my clothes off.

One of my friends only drew my face, whichever posture I took. I didn’t really look at the other two. Two weeks later I worked for the first time at a studio, one in which I myself used to draw from time to time. This time I also smoked a little before I went up. This time, I did look.

And then it happened. I knew that what’s on the paper there is me. I knew I sat, I stood, I lay down in front of these people, that this is my body.

And I didn’t hate the drawings.

I didn’t hate them. They weren’t ugly. That body, on the paper, was not ugly. It was not repellent.

There’s something about sitting like that, frozen, that’s meditative. A time in which you feel every passing moment in the muscles aching to move, and you also don’t feel the time passing at all. It’s a clean time, one in which you don’t need to do something else all the time.

It’s a time that’s non-judgemental.

Maybe surprisingly, certainly sadly enough, it’s also a time that is safe. I think that the studios and classes in which I worked as a nude model were the only spaces in all my adult life in which I wasn’t sexually harassed. Not even verbally. And when I think of the terminology of objectification in this content, it’s pretty interesting. Being a nude model is seemingly as objectifying as it gets. Every millimetre of my body is examined by many, many eyes, analysed and measured. But there, of all places, it’s not cheapening or appropriating. I don’t belong to these people, I’m not a sexual object.

A few days ago, while I was working at a third-floor studio, I stood with my back to the people and my face to the open window to Port Street. This was the first time I realised that while I work,I don’t feel threatened, simply because that as I stood there facing the window, facing the street, I was suddenly frightened somebody outside would see me. I realised suddenly how much the studio, where I stand naked with all the artists and the teacher, is the safe space, while the street, the pub, the coffee shop, the club, the university, are the dangerous, threatening places. Even when I’m dressed.